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Hi, my name is George Abraham and welcome to Eyeway Conversations. My guest today is Deepthi Bopaiah, the CEO of GoSports Foundation. So Deepthi, tell me how did you get interested in sports and your involvement with sport?
So George, you know I come from this place called Coorg and the two things we are very very good at is really in sport or we are part of the forces. And we've grown up seeing a lot of my family members in sport and you know they join the forces. So it's something that we do day in and day out from a very very young age. My parents, you know introduced sport to my sister and me very early on. And you know so grateful that they did because there was this constant interest to learn the sport and learn the lessons from sport and enjoy sport as well. So growing up, we played a lot of tennis and you know, school also had a lot of different sports. And eventually, we took up tennis and basketball played up to the state level and university level and then like I said, life happened. But till today, I think a lot of the life lessons in terms of just showing up every day, not giving up, working in a team, accepting failure, all of these things, I think come a lot more easier because of sport and it's played a very important role in my life.
So did you get into GoSports Foundation straight out of college or you had something in between?
No, so when I decided to stop pursuing my sport, I was trying to figure out what to do. So I went on to do my MBA in Symbiosis, Pune. And you know, once you get into a B School, the only thing you want is a great placement and you want to get placed on day zero and banks are typically the ones who give you a great package and they're usually there on day zero, and I got picked into HSBC Bank at that point of time and I was with the bank for six years. I had an incredible six years, was in three different roles, learned a lot in the bank. But you know, I would have these moments every few months and conversations with my bosses saying I really don't know what I'm doing you know, I mean, I'm not really impacting too many people's life and I really want to do something larger and bigger. And you know, I started exploring and that's when I came across, GoSports during my research and through common friends and family I got introduced to our trustees. And after hearing the vision in terms of what they had for GoSports, I was very very excited and intrigued and it was a difficult decision at that point of time, I was doing fairly well in the bank. I was one of the youngest Vice Presidents, we have fancy designations in the bank but you know, to give that very lucrative career up and get into a completely unknown space a decade ago was a big risk but I'm so glad I took that risk because it's been absolutely worth it. So that's when GoSports happened to me in 2012.
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Yeah before we go any further, can you tell us you talked about the vision of GoSports, what exactly is the vision of GoSports and what actually excited you?
So I think every four years as a country we wake up and talk about oh we don't have medalists or you know we're not good in sport, I don't think we have the ability or the body type is not you know like that, people with disabilities cannot play sport. There was so many myths and narratives around why we can't do it in sport. And when I met you know, our trustees I think the hope in terms of and the belief that as a nation, we have immense talent but what is really missing is the customized and systematic approach to nurture and support talent and I think that's really the part that excited me. And at GoSports, what we really believe is that you know in order to get medals, you have to first increase the base of Olympians and Paralympians and the medals will be an outcome but broadly from a social impact space, I think what we're really excited about is the pursuit of excellence, George because these young athletes you know, are making so many different sacrifices to get to their best level in sport. Our attempt is to smoothen the process, to support them, to guide them, to get them the necessary resources, both financial and non financial, and really get them to their best potential, which could be an Asian games, could be a Commonwealth and ultimately, the Olympics and the Paralympics. So our attempt is really enabling sports excellence and one of the things you know, which we believe at the foundation and this is something which is there in all our collateral is we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit. So we really believe that if you want to pursue excellence, it's a difficult route, it's a difficult path but if you have the right team, you can make it. And eventually we believe each of these athletes who go on to do well, eventually are role models for the country, for the youngsters, for everybody else and they create so much hope, I mean in a pandemic year, the entire nation came together cheering for Europeans and Paralympians in you know, 2021. So it was really exciting to see the power of sport and how it brings people together so that's what we really do at GoSports, George.
That sounds very interesting and the whole idea of making excellence a habit is an interesting concept. So, conceptually it sounds fascinating. What is the kind of strategy or process that you follow in terms of executing this vision into reality?
Yeah, so we are 13 years old, we've just become a teenager and our initial years you know, were really about going to individuals and you know, doing very small sort of interventions for athletes, buying them shoes or getting them equipment and really trying to continue to play sport. But as we grew, we realized that you know, we will create a proper structure and we started something called as the GoSports Scholarships where athletes can apply for our scholarships and they go through a process of shortlist and then we decide who we can work with, depending on our budget, depending on what our understanding of that sport based on the experts we have access to domestically and internationally. And then we you know, we started our scholarships in 2012, with about 20 athletes when we started and that has grown and today we give out scholarships to 135 athletes and you know, it's across six athlete development programs. We're very very fortunate to have Rahul Dravid and Pullela Gopichand on our advisory board. Abhinav Bindra was also there till 2017, till he started his own foundation. So we've really been guided by these legends in terms of what a young athlete pathway should look like and what is the support system they need. So it's been quite fascinating for us to really go beyond basic money but really get into high performance, get into biomechanics, get into sleep cycles, get into monitoring you know, all kinds of aspects regards to blood work, nutrition, and really give them what a world class athlete gets and then see whether our athletes can make it or not. And it's really heartening to see the number of athletes from India who have gone on to do so well at an international level. And I think it's a proof of concept every time that happens that we are on the right track and with support, the right guidance and the right team, athletes can get to the highest level in sport so that's how we run our projects and executed. At a team level, we have about 20 members currently in our team. We have a Partnerships team who's constantly attempting to raise funds and manage our existing donors and we have our Program team who's the heart of the foundation as well along with the athletes in terms of managing these athletes and we have Athlete Managers who work with you know, each of our athletes. So it's a team, it's a structure that we've built over a period of time. And you know, we've seen the success to the extent that even the Sports Ministry has you know, had started a scheme called called as the Target Olympic Podium Scheme, the TOPS scheme and the entire model of the structure you know, of Athlete Managers or Relationship Managers and how monitoring happens was all you know, very similar to what we did at GoSports. It was really nice and for a social impact organization, we will not be able to give the scale it requires and when the government adopts your processes or systems you know, it's probably one of the most heartening feelings because you know, you've got something right which can benefit the larger audience.
Deepthi, could you tell us about some of the success stories of GoSports, you're 13 years old I'm sure there are stars now that you can talk about?
Yes, so at the Olympics, we've obviously had about 12 of our athletes who went for the Tokyo Olympics, we had lot of India's first that happened. We had India's first fencer Bhavani Devi who went in, we had India's first female sailor you know, Nethra who went in this time, we had Darshak, we had the badminton players, three boys, Sipranit, Chirag, Satvik who are part of the team, Anjum who was a shooter, Kidambi Srikanth who very recently won the world championship medal as well. So you know all of this has taken many many many years for us. In fact, Kidambi Srikanth, it's a beautiful story because when we picked him up, he was somewhere in the top 200 in the world. And all he wanted was, "I want to play competitions and I know I can get to the top of this game" and six years later, he was world number one. And it was a really exciting journey, both for him and the foundation, to really try and understand what it takes to make a world class athlete and to become world number one. And along with that, we also work with athletes with disability. So we had a lot at the Rio Paralympics, which I was very fortunate to be there on ground. We out of the 19 athletes who qualified 11 was supported by the foundation, three of the medalists which include Deepa Malik, Devendra Jhajharia and Barun Bharti were all supported by the foundation. This time you know, we had 21 athletes out of the 54 who are supported through a para champions program. And George, you also have played a very crucial role in that program by helping us shortlist and select our athletes. So thank you very much. You know this time, we actually had the four gold medalists from that cohort so it has been really gratifying and heartening and satisfying in every possible way.
Deepthi, I have been kind of interested in knowing and I'm sure the audience also would be interested in knowing you know, athletes with disability, are not really talked about or thought of, that was the case still very recent, what actually was the thinking or the inspiration behind GoSports Foundation, actually looking at athletes with disability?
So as an organization, we've always thought about inclusivity. So even when we started in 2008, we looked at both athletes with disability as well as abled bodied athletes. So right from the start, we have always worked with athletes. And for us, in our mind it has always been you know, the Paralympics is the parallel of the Olympics, which just happens at the same place, three weeks later with some modifications for infrastructure accessibility. So why can't Indians do well, at the global stage at the Olympics and Paralympics. And when we started, I think a lot of the medals that happened till 2012 was all despite the system, there was no real structure per se in the Paralympic space. And our attempt was to really change that narrative because athletes with disabilities was always looked at as more from an sympathy standpoint, rather than you know oh we must do this for them rather than giving them a platform to excel. So I think for us, it was you know, thanks to our board members, our steering committee members, our trustees. We were able to take that call and we actually conceptualized something called as a Para Champions Program. None of what we do is possible without funding and finding partners who believe in our vision. So very very grateful to our partners like Aditya Birla Capital, IndusInd Bank, Sony Pictures you know, who actually came on board at the very start of these concepts and believed the nation building through sport. And that's really been a game changer for us because we were able to really take our concepts and showcase it to these you know corporates, get a leadership team to buy into our idea and then you know, support these programs. And I think the best thing that happened for Indian sport was CSR, the Corporate Social Responsibility mandate. India is one of the first countries in the world where it is mandated to you know, actually spend the CSR funding. And also, the fact that sport got included under one of the categories under Scheduled 7, which is training towards Olympic and Paralympic and rural sports and when that happened, there was no reason not to go all out and create a separate project for athletes with disabilities, really understand their challenges, pick up the talent and in an 8 year cycle, we've already seen the base triple, not just double but triple and I'm sure if the momentum can continue at Paris, which is three years away. We were 54 athletes at the Paralympics, who qualified we may have close to 80 100 if all goes well because that's the kind of momentum, that's the kind of awareness that has been created. So when we look back, medal is one of our outcomes. We're not chasing the medals, we're chasing the narratives, we're chasing all the possible things that people are saying this is not possible and we're really fighting those battles. And once it gets to a stage, I think today the Paralympic Committee of India, the Sports Authority of India, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, everybody is working together, all of us, the federations, we're all working together and a large part of the success at Tokyo has been because of collaboration and you know, keeping the athlete at the center of all our decisions, irrespective of whether they're an abled bodied athlete or an athlete with disability. So I think that change in perception has been really special to see.
Disability is a diverse space and, you know, today according to the Government of India, there are 21 disabilities that have been recognized, till very recently, till 2016, in fact, people talked about 7 disabilities. So when you actually look at identifying and promoting athletes disability, each disability requires a certain amount of specialization. So where do you get this specialized inputs to actually facilitate athletes with disability to go on further in their quest for glory?
So our initial years were really difficult in terms of finding the right experts, the physios, the trainers, really trying to see you know, how can we work with athletes with disability. We are very fortunate to have John Gloster, who's our head of sports science, somebody who's you know, worked with the Indian cricket team, who has international exposure experience, has worked with athletes with disability in the past, who helped us create an entire ecosystem in terms of you know, how we should be working with athletes, what are the guidelines we need to follow, what are the elements that we can actually participate in and if you look at the Paralympics, they're very clear on the kind of events that they have. And we have the Paralympic Committee of India registered who is the national body to take these decisions on the events and broadly they take part in certain categories of parasport. So whether it is power lifting, athletics, para badminton and para shooting, right, so these are the broad categories under which you know, the events that we can take part in. So we followed the similar metrics and then we went about doing it from there. So it was interesting initially to choose the sports and get the sports but what we really seen as all the role models that have come out, all the previous medalists or athletes who have qualified, I think they have created such a huge interest from so many people with disabilities who now believe that they can also create an identity for themselves. They can also be healthy, they can also push their limits and they can get to the best in the world. So I think for us, it has been a long journey, we're still learning, we're still trying to explore all the possibilities that is available globally, how do you bring in global expertise back into India. And I think a lot of partnerships are you know, key for something like this to really get to the next level.
Deepthi, as you know, we as an organization at Score Foundation focus on people who are visually impaired. Tell me a little bit about the kind of work that you've done with athletes who are blind.
So we currently work with about four athletes with disabilities, you know they have guide, three of them have guide runners, so we have to work with them as a team, you know, the guide runner has to match and it's like a relationship right, they both have to work together, they both have to be talking to each other. You have someone like Ankur Dhama, who's also you know supported in his early days from your organization as well. He went on to the Asian Games, is a medalist there, he's also went in for the Rio Paralympics. It was heartbreaking because his guide runner fell down over there and you know, that was one of my you know, most heartbreaking moments in sport that I have seen you know because for that 3-4 seconds, when you lose your guide runner you know, the emotions that were probably going through in his mind and the guide runner's mind but they completed the race but you know, that particular moment. So there's so many nuances to be learned, in terms of how to run, what to run the sounds that are allowed, what kind of equipment that needs to be used, how do they train, the training process is quite an interesting process how do you keep them fit, a lot of listening, a lot of different conversations need to happen, their nutrition, their mental conditioning. So there's a whole range of elements that we as an organization, adding to take them to the next level in their performance. So for us, yes, every athlete, each and every athlete amongst the 135 have individual curated programs. So there is no generic program for everyone because even if you're talking about a runner, their body type, their requirements, their strength, their nutrition program is very different from another athlete who's also a runner, even if in the same category but needs complete set of different set of interventions so we're still learning on the job, long way to go.
It might be interesting for you to kind of on this show, talk about the various events globally that visually impaired athletes actually participate in.
Right now, athletics is the number one event but you know, if you look at in athletics, there are different types of you know, events over there that athletes can participate in. But like I said, we are at a very very, even globally, the number of visually impaired athletes are very low and then you know, we were also trying to understand why is this low. The reason that came out is that socially, the visually impaired individuals have a lot more opportunities than other people with disability. I don't know if that data is right or you know accurate. But it was interesting to see that a lot of people with who are visually impaired actually have gone on to study got educated and then gone on to do other things. But if you look at athletics for example, there are categories like T 11, T 12 T 13, F 11, F 12, F 13. You have, when you run with a guide, it's called T 11. There are cycling events, there's equestrian, there's football, five aside, there's goalball, there's judo, there's rowing, there is sailing, there is swimming you know, swimming is also there. So there are all these categories. And you know, it's growing and every year we are seeing a lot more people come in but as of now, the visually impaired participation from India is pretty low. And it's an interesting point that you've brought out. Definitely something to work together and see how we can introduce more visually impaired athletes into the events and you know, get them into understanding what it takes.
To support our work with the blind and visually impaired, you can visit the donate page on our website, www.scorefoundation.org.in. Please note, www.scorefoundation.org.in
Finally, I'd just like to ask you there would be a number of people with visual impairment who probably would be listening to this program, also organizations working with people who are visually impaired who probably would listen to this chat. I would like you to share as to how do you actually access athletes for your programs number one, number two, if there are athletes who want to become part of your program, how do they actually get in touch?
So we actually have a scholarship process, so athletes apply for a scholarship. You know, we just closed our application process about two weeks ago, we have actually received about 200 odd applications just from athletes with disabilities, we now need to break down and see what are the different types of disability applications that we've received. But it was very interesting and heartening to see that number go up for us. So anybody who's interested, who wants to participate, who wants to take part in these events, there is a registration that needs to be done with the Paralympic Committee of India. So you need to first get registered and then there is a classification that has to happen. Now unfortunately, that classification does not happen in India, we don't have our own classifiers. So for you to get classified, you may need to travel for an event internationally and get your classification that is based on the medical testing and assessments, they will give you a category that you fall under and where you need to participate in. So that is the first step that anybody with disability will have to take, you have to first get registered under the Paralympic Committee of India and then you have to get your classification done. So when these two things happen, post that you can apply for a scholarship because that is a very bare requisite for you to start participating at even state level and then national level events. So once once you're able to do that, definitely you can apply for a scholarship and even if you are not sure about the process, you want to know how to go about it, we're more than happy, our entire team would be more than happy to guide anybody who's interested and who wants access or connections or networks to get this whole process done for them. We've done it for many many athletes in the past and we're more than happy to help anybody else who wants to explore the world of sport.
So is there any email id or telephone number or website where people could connect with you?
Yeah, so our website is www.gosports.in over there also, we have our scholarship application link, you can go directly there and apply. You can also write to us at foundation@gosports.in and you can also write to me deeptibopaiah@gosports.in so you can reach out to any of us and we'd be more than happy to see how we can smoothen this process for you to get into sport and eventually do really well in sport.
Lovely lovely, wonderful speaking with you, Deepthi and I think what GoSports Foundation is doing is something which a lot of people with disability would have actually dreamt of maybe a couple of decades ago. So take care and keep the good work going.
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Lovely speaking to you.
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